


SGU EU 3

by Deacon_Heller



Series: Stargate Universe EU C137 [3]
Category: Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 10:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27349642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deacon_Heller/pseuds/Deacon_Heller
Summary: Eli makes contact with Stargate Command and discovers just how much has changed, for the better and for the worse.
Series: Stargate Universe EU C137 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965601
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	SGU EU 3

Eli sat in the captain's chair watching and re-watching the return message he'd received from the orb.

"Hello Eli, I'm General Samantha Carter from Stargate Command. I'm sorry it took us so long to reach you. When Destiny became years overdue we presumed you were dead. That's the bad news. The good news is that we were recently able to send a probe onto Destiny, and now that we know someone is out of stasis we'll contact you again in twenty four hours to talk to you directly," The blonde woman in the black uniform explained. "Eli, we did not forget about you. We're going to help you. Just hang on one more day."

Eli watched the counter on one of the overhead screens until it reached zero. He waited, looking from the orb to the panels on the chair and then back to the orb. Nothing happened. He looked at his watch, and then to Wilson.

"Tell me I didn't hallucinate all of this," Eli told Wilson, and then he slowly nodded looking down. "He said to the inanimate object."

He looked back to the control panels on the chair again, and his left foot began to bounce as the seconds ticked past. Finally, a light flashed on the chair's right control panel. It indicated that the gate was open and dialed from outside the ship. Eli looked up at the orb, but the front view screen lit up. General Carter was smiled at Eli.

"Hello Eli," She said.

"Hi," Eli stood up from the chair and waved. "How are you...?" He pointed to the screen. 

"Yes, this. We can do a lot more than just dial the ship now. We've located an Ancient planet, well, the Ancient planet. This is where they would have reached out to ships like Destiny," She explained.

"Ships?"

"I've got so much to tell you," Her grin grew wider. "Destiny is not the only ship of its kind. It's part of a fleet."

"Fleet!" Eli repeated. 

"Fleet!" She said. "This whole planet is the pinnacle of what the Ancients accomplished. Not only is it an Icarus Class world, but this is where they did it all."

"Did what?"

"Built their technology, all of it," She held up her hands. "Right now, I'm in the center of what we are calling the Capitol Tower. It's in the center of the capitol city on this planet. From here we can access ships like Destiny, monitor them, control them remotely, even download all the data from the computer's core."

"How about deliver some pizza?" Eli asked.

"Right, yes. Tell me what happened."

"Long story short we had to reroute leaving the last galaxy and it tripled our trip time. We made it and we’ve been in orbit around the same star for about eight months now. I've been doing what I could as far as repairs, which is not much. I've been making regular trips to a relatively safe planet and gathering fruit and some local meat. I've added a about two hundred gallons of water to the ships store. I boiled it first," Eli clarified. "But life support is still pretty thin. I spend most of my time down on that world. It's, kind of like Hawaii."

"That's not so bad. I've seen some pretty hostile worlds," Carter replied. "Why haven't you brought anyone else out of stasis yet?"

"Life support. I've only got about five percent of the ship pressurized to keep the CO2 levels out of the red. If I bring anyone else out and the levels drop back down to critical. I didn't want to do that to anyone."

"I understand, and I think I can help," She said. "Why don't you head to the gate room?"

In the gate room Eli saw a small black plastic case on the deck just in front of the open gate with a Post It note on it that read "Open Me". Eli found an earpiece inside and put it in his ear. "Hello?"

"Eli, you got the com, good. We're going to send some things through. When we sent the probe aboard we noticed the air was dangerously thin, so we're going to send you a couple of portable air scrubbers. We need you to move the gear so we can send you more."

"Let's do it."

Eli watched dozens of large black plastic cases come through secured on large rolling wire shelf units. Eli pushed them away from the gate one by one until he was standing between two rows with eight shelving racks each.

"You're really going to like what's coming next," Carter told Eli.

"I would literally murder someone for salt and pepper right now, so I'm going to love anything you give me," Eli responded. He watched as a twelve-cylinder unit of air tanks on a rolling frame. Eli struggled to push it back far enough to make space in front of the gate. "Is this air?"

"It's air," Carter replied, "And there’s two more coming through."

"General Carter, you're the best general in all of the Air Force, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise," Eli said with a grin as he walked back to the gate. He pushed the two other banks of air cylinders back. Next a massive machine with an air tank on its side came through and Eli looked at it with puzzlement as he pushed it back.

"So, what is this?"

"It's a portable air compressor with a Naquadah battery and a backup solar power system. Once you empty out all three of those air banks you can take them to a planet with breathable air and refill them with the compressor until you have as much air as you need." 

"This is going to help so much," Eli laughed.

"This is the last thing we have for this resupply," Carter said as the last thing slid through. Eli looked at it for a second, it was a flat cardboard box. He picked it up and laughed.

"It's not the best, but it's what we have here," Carter told him.

"It's literally the best pizza in this whole galaxy," Eli said while he chewed. "Thank you, so much."

"Get back to the bridge," Carter told him.

"Okay," Eli said, walking out of the gate room. On the bridge he sat back in the captain's chair looking at General Carter.

"That was what we could put together in the last twenty-four hours," Carter explained of the shipment. "I've contacted Earth, and they're putting together a much larger resupply for you. Until then you should be able to assemble those portable air scrubbers, open those air tanks, and open up enough of the ship to bring Colonel Young out of stasis."

"I will," Eli nodded. "You said that was the planet where Destiny was built? Then you might be able to find me some spare parts. I need one of..." Eli set the pizza down and held up a life support cartridge, "...these. Or as many as you can find or make. I've tried to get the materials I need to refill them, but there were Crab People."

"Crab People?"

"Hostile aliens."

"Those," Carter nodded. "Alright, put together a list of the parts you need and the most immediate supplies you need. You'll be able to transmit it directly to us from Destiny now."

"Clothes," Eli said without hesitation. "We've all been wearing the same thing for, I guess over a decade now, and everything I'm wearing now I had to get off a dead person."

"We thought of that," Carter answered. "There are spare uniforms in the shipment."

"What's the status of the communication stones?" Eli asked.

"They were discontinued two years after you were supposed to come out of stasis, but I'll have them sent here and put back into use," Carter said. "In fact, you may be able to help us, help you."

"What do you mean?"

"The facilities on this planet date back to before the Destiny class ships were built and continued all the way until the Ancients ascended. That's over a million years of updates, but they didn't seem to change any of the old systems they used to build Destiny. The difference between those systems and the one's we're used to dealing with are massive. It's been slow going."

"It always is," Eli sighed. 

"We'll contact you again in forty-eight hours to check your progress and continue that schedule from now on."

"I'll have that list ready for you by the next check in," Eli said. "But life support is the most immediate problem right now."

"We'll help with that as much as we can from this end," Carter assured him.

Eli let out a long sigh. "It's so good to hear from you."

"Hang in there Eli. We're going to do everything we can to help you."

The screen changed from video to an Ancient symbol that Eli hadn't seen before. It read Auralon Command in Ancient. After a second it blinked off and he could once again see through the screen to the space beyond. He glanced over at Wilson.

"Don't get your hopes up Wilson, but we might actually live through this," Eli told Wilson, and then he picked the pizza back up and sat back in the chair as he ate another slice.

Ten slices later Eli dragged the first heavy black wheeled case to the bridge and began to read the instructions to assemble the CO2 scrubber. After a few seconds he looked up at Wilson.

"Wow, it's actually a little hard to read English again," Eli folded the instructions back up and tossed them to the deck. "Ok, this should be plug and play."

Forty-three minutes later.

"What in the IKEA hell?" Eli snapped at Wilson. He sat on the deck beside the black plastic case and the air scrubber with the directions in his left hand. "The battery is connected, the filter is in place, the panel is displaying the menu. I don't get..."

Eli pulled the pistol from the holster on his right hip and aimed it at the air scrubber. "Say PC Load Letter one more time!"

"D'AHHH!" Eli screamed before holstering his pistol. He punched the ON button and the scrubber lit up. It began humming in a low tone. "Are you serious right now?"

The next four scrubbers went into the mess hall, control hub, observation room, and the hall just outside his quarters with considerably less difficulty to activate. Eli scowled at Wilson as he walked away from the last scrubber.

"Can you believe this? I can fix a million year old space ship, but an air scrubber makes me want to jam my thumbs into my eyes," Eli growled as he walked back to the gate room and looked at one of the three large air banks, and he read the label on the side of the unit.

"Three thousand, seven hundred and twenty cubic feet of air times," Eli counted the number of tanks. "Twelve tanks, times three units, so that makes twenty-five thousand, nine hundred and twenty cubic feet of air. It's a start."

Eli examined the air units and opened each of the twelve tanks into the manifold and then opened the manifold. He opened the other two air banks.

"I think I can fit two of these into a shuttle with the compressor," Eli told Wilson. "That's going to take forever. It'll probably take millions of cubic feet to fill the ship up, but it's better than nothing and it should cut down on Rush's complaining."

He walked over to the nearest shelf of plastic cases and read the text stamped on the case. "Auralon Command. Neat. Let's see what's inside."

Eli opened the case and started laughing. He pulled out a black uniform jacket and held it up to Wilson.

"Christmas comes to Destiny. Clothes! Never thought I'd be so happy to get them as a present. Oh look..." Eli turned the uniform jacket around to face Wilson. He pointed to the name tape which had his last name on it. "Wallace. I get my own uniform. I feel so official."

Eli put it on and dug through the rest. "Pants, shorts, t-shirts, shoes, socks, boots. Underwear!" Eli held up a pair of boxers, "Score!"

Eli spent the next twenty minutes going through each case one by one to find out exactly what he had. When he opened the last case, which was the fifth case of munitions and tactical gear, he closed the lid and sat down on the case, smiling up at Wilson.

"Okay, so we got what looks like six months of MREs, whatever that stands for, worth of food. That's a lot of Ravioli. I've got enough weapons and ammo to take on those Crab People, but I'm not going to. Johansen is going to be excited about not having to wash bandages anymore. We've also got a ton of, I don't know, camping or survival gear? Could have really used that about eight months ago. Water purification tablets. I should probably go throw a handful of those into the ships water storage tanks. Just to be sure."

48 hours later the gate opened, and Eli got the signal to use the communication stones to reach out to Auralon Command. A few minutes later Eli sat down in the communication lab wearing his new black uniform. He took a Sharpie and wrote a note on a yellow Post It and stuck it to his chest. He took a deep breath and put the stone on the pad.

The room instantly changed. When the other person arrived in Eli's body he looked around the room and down at the body he found himself in. He saw the note on his chest and plucked it off to read it. "Don't touch anything. Don't leave the room. Don't get out of the chair. YOU WILL DIE!"

Eli found himself sitting in a brightly lit room with bronze trimmed red panels on a washed-out blue wall. Eli got up and looked around the room and then out the window at the city surrounding the tower they were in.

"Oh wow!"

A young woman sitting in the room typing on a computer looked at Eli and then tapped her ear com. "General Carter, he's here."

Eli looked back from the city outside at the room he was in. "This is so different from Destiny, it's all..."

"Futuristic Art Deco," The tech as she stood up.

"I don't know what that is. I was going to say Ray Punk."

"I don't know what that is, but Art Deco is the phrase they keep throwing around to describe the Capitol Tower," She explained.

"Tower? Are we in a tower? How high up are we? How big is the city?" Eli asked pointing out the window. "Why's the sky red?"

"I just work here," She held up her hands. “Now come with me.”

"I have so many questions," He followed her out of the room. She led Eli into the hallway which was colored in the same washed out rustic earth tones as the rest of the tower interior. Eli looked to his left at the open center of the tower. He walked over to the handrail and looked four stories down at the eighty-meter-wide octagonal floor below. At the center of all eight walls sat a Stargate.   
Three of the eight gates were active. A team came through one gate while another team was preparing to depart through another. A thirty-meter-wide circular iris opened in the center of the Gate Floor and a tube-shaped ship floated upwards. It hovered and turned in place until was facing an active gate with floor lights blinking in a pattern leading to the gate. The small ship pushed forward and glided through the gate before it deactivated. 

“Whoa-oh my God!” Eli said id giddy delight. “Was that a…gate ship?”

“Puddle Jumper,” She corrected.

“But it’s a ship…that goes through the gate.”

“Look, I didn’t name it,” She said leaning on railing beside Eli. She pointed to the hanger door as it slowly closed. “There’s more than two hundred ships in it.”

“There’s so many gates.”

“This planet was their hub, not only for all the worlds in the galaxy, but all the other galaxies they explored. It’s also where they reached out to ships with gates, like Destiny.”

Eli watched as another gate activated and the three-meter-wide circular panel raised out of the floor in front of the gate. The circular panel split sideways, and a series of antennae extended upwards from under it. 

“This is really cool, watch this,” She grinned at Eli. 

The antennae lit up and began emitting dozens of lightning bolts in a circular pattern like a Tesla Coil. His eyes got even bigger as he watched the color of the lighting change. 

“What is that?” 

“That’s a matter relay. One of the automated mining ships is transmitting matter through the gate into the relay. From the relay the matter is transmitted all over the planet to whatever location needs the raw materials. When the lighting changes color that means it’s transmitting different matter like; naquadah, iron, nickel, or whatever.”

“I have so many questions!”

“They’re going to have to wait,” A voice came from behind Eli. He turned around and saw General Carter waving him into a door.

"Pretty amazing, isn't it?"

"Well it's brighter than what I'm used to," Eli commented as he followed Carter through one of the four open slot like rusty bronze colored doors into a conference room with people standing around the table talking in small groups. Once in the room the four doors slowly turned in place to form a closed wall behind them. Eli turned around and glanced at the doors before he sat where Carter gestured at the far end of the table with his back to a window looking out over the city. 

"This place is amazing," Eli said pointing over his shoulder to the city outside as he sat down at the table.

"We think so," General Carter smiled as she sat down and put a thick folder on the table in front of her. "I need to introduce you to a few people. You remember Dr. Carl Strom, the chairman of the IOA. Next to him is Dr. Evans, she's the IOA liaison for Auralon Command. Next to her in the grey robes is Dakol, and he's the Free Jaffa representative stationed here. In the brown uniform is Vasser, and she represents the Tok'ra High Council. And finally, we have Tamsin and she represent the Coalition of Free Worlds."

"Okay, the Jaffa thing sounds vaguely familiar," Eli shrugged.

"They're all allies of the Tau'ri," Carter explained.

"What's a Tau'ri?" Eli asked.

"Um, people from Earth," Carter clarified.

"Ok...am I a Tau'ri?" Eli asked.

"Only in this galaxy," Carter said quickly and changed the subject. "What can you tell us about the condition of Destiny right now."

"Oh, it’s bad."

"Could you elaborate?" Strom asked.

"Really, really, bad," Eli said.

"Hull integrity? Engine status?" The Tok'ra scientist Vasser asked.

"Right, in the last eight months I've managed to repair almost all of the shield emitters and close the eleven biggest holes in the hull."

"That sounds like progress," Strom commented.

"You misunderstand. I fixed the eleven biggest holes in the hull, but there are hundreds more. They range from microscopic to big enough to drive a truck through," Eli explained. "With just two AMRs, it would take about three more years to fix every one of them, but they're not really the top priority."

"Not top priority?" Tamsin asked.

"No. When I get back I'll send you a full diagnostic so you can see for yourself. There's too much for me to list right now," Eli said.

"Moving past the condition of the ship, why did your trip take twelve years instead of four?" Strom asked.

"A black hole, well, a little one. That was just, kind of wandering between galaxies," Eli replied. "I don't know if Destiny failed to detect it when plotting it's course or just thought it could get past it without any trouble, but whatever it was, Destiny came up short. Logs show that the engines actually cut out in between galaxies to conserve its last bit of fuel and it coasted the rest of the way. Eventually it got close enough to the star to make a refueling run. That's when I woke up."

"Where is Destiny now?" Carter asked.

"Still in orbit around the star. I put the engines on standby so I could stay in one place long enough to get some work done without any hostile aliens trying to blow us up, not that it did much good."

"Wait, why not?" Strom asked.

"Yeah, I ran into some hostile aliens anyway."

"You engaged hostile life forms?" Strom demanded.

"No, I was looking at the Crab People, and they shot at me first. After that it was less of an encounter and more of a race back to the shuttle while dodging lasers and stuff."

"Crab People?" Carter asked.

"Yeah, they kind of looked like those little dudes from South Park that were trying to...you know what, it doesn't matter."

"You've already made enemies?" Strom growled.

"I don't know if I'd call them enemies just yet. There was some shooting back and forth, but they missed me and I'm pretty sure I didn't hit any of them so..." Eli just shrugged.

"What's this?" Strom asked, mimicking the shrug. "You may have triggered a war with an unknown species and this isn't a problem to you?"

"Ok, it's been a while, so you may have forgotten," Eli said, as he leaned forward in his chair. "Starting a war with an unknown hostile alien race doesn't even crack the Top Ten List of my problems."

Eli looked around the table and waited for a remark, but no one responded so he continued.

"I'll go over a few things that are real problems for me. As soon as I came out of stasis, I was hypoxic. I didn't eat for days after that. During the time I wasn't eating, I was almost eaten, twice," Eli held up two fingers. "When I'm not hyperventilating on a haunted alien space-ship I'm running from world to world looking for the right dirt so I can rig a partially functional filter for life support."

Eli stopped for a second, looking at each face before he continued.

"I've given myself food poisoning over and over trying to figure out what was edible so I could survive long enough to fix a ship which is one direct hit from cracking like an egg and killing everyone else. I got hijacked from my living room away from mother, who at this point, I'm pretty sure has died alone while I was on ice like Captain America, hurtling through the empty void of space, further than any human has ever gone..."

"Eli..." Carter tried to take control of the conversation.

"But do you hear me sitting here complaining? No! I'm just asking for whatever you can give me to save everyone else, people who did actually volunteer to be there, so we can all get back home."

"Mr. Wallace..." Strom began.

"Destiny," Eli cut Strom off, "is orbiting a star with no planets, on the most distant edge of the galaxy. So, to be clear, I'm not worried about being hunted down by some pissed off aliens. The gravity waves alone could snap the ship in half and vaporize us at any second. So, no, a couple of insect people chasing me through an abandoned glass city isn't a problem, it's a Tuesday."

"Moving on," Carter said, looking sideways at Strom. 

"Not yet," Eli stopped her while he still had moral momentum in the conversation. "I need to know about my mother."

Carter frowned and took a manila folder from the stack in front of her and slid it across the table towards Eli. He read it for a few moments before he stood up and walked towards the window. He threw the file at the window and leaned on it for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and turning back around. Carter waited for Eli to sit back down before continuing.

"At some point I want the communication stones moved back to Earth so I can visit her," Eli said.

"Logistically speaking..." Strom began, but Carter cut him off.

"We'll arrange it," She said flatly. "We have the ability to interface with Destiny directly from here. We can get more complete reports this way. When we're ready we'll move the stones back to Earth so the crew can try to reconnect to their lives. But before we can do that we are going to need you working with us on the older systems so we can get our technicians here to a point where they can help you."

Eli nodded.

"We understand that you have suffered greatly, and you have accomplished feats beyond what could have been rightly expected of you," Dakol began.

"See!" Eli pointed at the Jaffa official while he glared at Strom. "How hard was that? Yes, Mr. Duvall, what can I do for you?"

"I understand that your situation is dire, but there are countless people like yourself living through dire situations in this galaxy. Part of our alliance is the free sharing of information and technology," Dakol explained.

"What do you need from me?" Eli asked.

"We understand that your ship has acquired millions of years of information, starting with data about galaxies beside our own. We would very much like to be able to examine it for anything that could help our situation here," Dakol continued. "It is our understanding that you will be able to transmit this data from your ship to this world."

"I'll figure out how to do that as soon as I can," Eli nodded. "What else?"

"We need you to bring Colonel Young out of stasis," Strom continued.

"I was going to."

"We need you to do it now," Strom countered.

"No."

"No?" Strom repeated.

"No. I can't right now. Life support is still catching up to where it was before we went into stasis. I've only got a fraction of the space we had open before. The air tanks that you've sent have helped and the air scrubbers are really speeding it up, but we're just not there yet."

"When will you be?" Strom asked.

"Hang on," Eli said as he began to count with his fingers. "Carry the two...I don't know. A week or two, maybe."

"Make it a week," Strom insisted.

"Did physics change in this galaxy while I was gone? It takes as long as it takes. You want it to move faster then send me more air tanks, and more air scrubbers."

Strom took a long and deep breath to deal with being denied casually to his face.

"You'll be receiving a few more resupplies, but we don't have the resources to give anything you want," Strom explained.

"I want air! Are you running out of air now?" Eli snapped. "You want everyone out of stasis immediately, I need more air. If I have to, I can do the rest myself." 

"You don't have to do it all yourself anymore Eli," Carter assured him.

"I'll put together a report with the ships status and the essential materials we need so you can scrounge up enough for us to start doing what you want," Eli said.

"We'll try to have what you need before we start sending you additional crew," Carter said.

"Don't send anybody else. We don't have enough of anything for the people already there. If you send more people it'll kill us all."

"It won't actually," Carter smiled for the first time since the meeting began. She slid another folder towards Eli and waited while he scanned it.

"Androids?" Eli looked up at Carter.

"We came across them early in the Stargate Program and we've had scientists working with Harlan, the last functioning android from that civilization kept it from dying completely, and we've made a lot of progress," Carter said.

"What do they look like? Are we talking…Terminators? That would be so cool…and kind of creepy now that I think about it," Eli said.

"No, they look just like you and me. On the outside they're indistinguishable from a regular person. We've been using android copies of key personnel to help spread out expertise and manpower to some of the most dangerous operations," Carter explained.

"And they work? Like, robot clones of people."

"Pretty much. We're going to send you additional personnel to fully staff departments like medical, engineering, security..." Carter said.

"Command," Strom added. 

Eli looked at Strom.

"Colonel Young was never meant to lead this expedition, and his performance has been inconsistent. We're now in position to send more qualified leadership," Strom commented. "So that the ship has a fully functional command staff."

"I think it's best if I update Eli about the additional personnel on the way to the construction facility," Carter interjected.

"Yeah, let's do that. Anyone else have any questions? No, no, no? Good meeting, productive meeting," Eli said as he stood up and started moving toward the door, pointing at the three representatives as he walked around the table. "Nice meeting you all. Look forward to sending you mind numbing reports."

Carter quickly stood up and followed Eli out the door into the hall.

"That was quit the first impression you just made," Carter said quietly to Eli as she led him through the hall towards an elevator. 

"Yeah, I've been by myself for a long time," Eli said, "so my "people skills"," Eli made air quotes with his fingers, "are a little bit "rusty"."

"I get that you're under a lot of stress," Carter said stopping him with a hand on his chest. "But you're not the only one. There's a lot going on here that you don't know about."

"You're right, I'm sorry," Eli sighed.

"Come with me," She stepped through two sliding doors into an elevator.

"So, tell me about this place?" Eli asked as the doors closed. "I saw all the gates, that’s pretty cool."

"It's so much more than that," Carter grinned. "Auralon Command is a network of construction facilities the Ancients used to create, literally everything. It’s also the central database of all their technology, history, and information. This is where all the Destiny class ships sent the information they collected to be processed," Carter said. "We found it six years ago. The location was hidden in the gate address index. This is where the Ancients built Destiny, and all the other Destiny Class Exploration ships."

"Yeah, you mentioned there were more ships like Destiny. How many?" Eli asked. 

"We dialed over two hundred so far."

"Wow."

"The universe is a big place, and you can't explore it with one ship," Carter explained. 

"Six years." Eli repeated. "You've been here six years and you could have dialed any time?"

"We did. Several times. You were in stasis, and there was never any response with the communications stones. When you were four years past your return date the IOA assumed you were dead. Then the war started."

"War?"

"We recently discovered the Ancient probes," Carter changed the subject. "We started using them and sent one aboard Destiny to ascertain its condition." 

Eli nodded as Carter tapped a screen on the wall of the elevator and brought up a digital map, and she kept tapping spots as the map narrowed down further and further. 

"I'm sorry we didn't use them sooner, but this world is full of so many things that we've never seen before, and we're spread pretty thin around the galaxy," She said over her should to Eli.

"I get it, we weren't a priority."

"You are now," Carter put her hand on his shoulder. “So, quit fishing for sympathy.”

"So, how's Earth?" Eli changed the subject.

"Well, there's some good news and some bad news," Carter began. "The good news is that there is world peace...mostly."

Eli just waited for the bad news.

"The whole world knows about the Gate, and the secret wars we've been fighting."

"I bet that went well," Eli nodded.

"We had to make a lot of concessions."

"How did it all get out?" Eli asked.

"Earth was attacked, again. There was no keeping it quiet after that."

"How bad was it?"

"It could have been a lot worse, but the secret was out."

"What about now?" Eli asked.

"Earth is secure now," Carter assured him.

"And this place?"

"Even more secure," Carter explained. She tapped a button below the screen and turned to Eli. "This will probably look more familiar to you."

The double doors opened.

"I didn't even feel it move," Eli commented.

"It teleports," Carter answered.

"What the..." Eli stepped out and looked around a room that looked exactly like the bridge of Destiny.

A technician sat in the captain's chair with a laptop plugged into the right control panel while two more where trying to splice another computer to the forward center station.

"This looks exactly like...," Eli said as he stepped towards the captain's chair. He turned around and looked at the computer core columns that flanked the rear of the room and saw folding tables and chairs with computers that were spliced into them. "What is this place?"

"It's the control room for the factory that builds Exploration Class ships like Destiny," Carter said. "We came down here when you made contact and we've been trying to get the systems back online, but it's so old compared to what we're used to that it's practically a whole different system."

"I might be able to help," Eli said, as he stood in front of the central chair and motioned for the tech to move. She looked at General Carter, who nodded her out of the chair. Eli sat down and within a minute all the stations lit up and came online.

"That's further than we've gotten in three weeks," The technician said to General Carter.

"I've been living with this for...I'm not even sure how long at this point," Eli said without looking up. "I just hope there's no master control code crap here too."

"What?" Carter asked. When Eli didn't answer or look up Carter asked. "Do you need anything?"

The monitors began to glow, and Eli looked back at Carter. "Cheeseburgers, as many as you can get. This body is hungry and I would literally murder everyone in this room for something with cheese on it."

"I'll see what I can do," Carter smiled before she left.

Four hours and four cheeseburgers later Eli radioed Carter from the control chair in the center of the room.

"Ok, I've done everything I can for now. I’ve got all the computers spliced into the systems and everything is booting up."

"How long?" Carter asked.

"Ten hours, ten days, I've got now of knowing," Eli explained.

"Understood."

"I've walked to the techs through the systems to get them a little more caught up, but there's not much more I can do today."

"Alright, one of the techs can bring you back to the Stone Room," Carter said. "We'll dial Destiny in twenty-four hours to update you and there will be someone on the stones from now on."

Several minutes later Eli’s mind returned to his own body on Destiny. "I don't think I'm ever gonna get used to that."

He looked down at the note he wrote for the other person clenched tightly in his hand. He suddenly became aware that his butt was number, and his hand hurt from gripping the note so tightly for so long. He stood up and dropped the note.

"Looks like that worked, I really got to pee."


End file.
